Dell Mini 10 Netbook Officially Available: $399

Your wait is officially over if you’ve been pining for a Dell (s DELL) Inspiron Mini 10 netbook. Dell’s order page is up and ready to accept your $399. As netbooks move away from the 8.9-inch displays and migrate to around 10-inch units, this gets Dell’s foot in the door for that segment. It seems a bit rushed to me, though, due to two constraints: the screen display loses a wee bit of horizontal resolution with the 1024×576 display and there’s a hard RAM limit of 1GB. Not everyone needs or wants more RAM but you won’t even have the option on the debut model. At this price, the ASUS 1000HE with included 6-cell battery is more appealing to me personally (the Mini 10 comes with a 3-cell), but to each his or her own. :)

By the way, the Direct2Dell blog says “Initially, all Mini 10s will come with 1GB fixed RAM (which means it will not be upgradable)” which tells me there’s a chance for memory upgrade options on future Mini 10 models. Note that the base Mini 10 comes with the 1.3GHz Z520. The 1.6GHz Z530 will set you back an additional $50.